a comprehensive landsat 8 ndvi and ndbi data preparation for the vegetation trend analysis in iran

Ensuring the availability of accurate and consistent datasets is crucial for reliable vegetation monitoring and trend analysis. while many studies in the islamic republic of iran concentrate on vegetation change detection using data from satellites with coarse spatial resolutions, such as modis (moderate resolution imaging spectroradiometer), there is a noticeable gap in the literature regarding suitable datasets for moderate satellite image resolution like landsat 8 (oli). these datasets offer unique capacity and challenges that warrant specific attention in the development of change detection methods. this study addresses this gap by presenting a landsat 8 dataset of normalized difference vegetation index (ndvi) and normalized difference built-up index (ndbi) covering the years 2013-2023. to compile this dataset, we downloaded 880 landsat 8 scenes for iran, with the majority (84%) acquired in august. additionally, 461 out of 880 landsat 8 scenes had zero cloud cover, accounting for 52.3% of all scenes analyzed in the study. although this study did not directly undertake a vegetation trend analysis, it provides valuable insights into the challenges and considerations necessary for vegetation trend analyses in iran. future research could explore the impact of pixel size on vegetation trend analysis by comparing datasets from different sources, such as landsat 8, to further enhance our understanding of vegetation dynamics in iran.